USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. I > Part 74
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1 See page 164.
3 Poets of Connecticut, p. 321.
2 See page 165.
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the life of Mr. Clay, and set out on a journey to the West to collect materials for his work. He did not return to Connecticut. In Septem- ber he established the " Louisville Journal," and made his home in Kentucky. Before leaving Hartford he bade a temporary "good-by " to his readers, and informing them that " Mr. J. G. Whittier, an old favorite of the public," would probably have charge of the " Review " in his absence, he " congratulated them on the prospect of their more familiar acquaintance with a gentleman of such powerful energies and such exalted purity and sweetness of character." "I have," he adds, " made some enemies among those whose good opinion I value ; but no rational man can ever be the enemy of Mr. Whittier."
Prentice had been among the very first to recognize the merits of the young Quaker poet and to predict his fame. In June, 1829, he re- printed in the " Review " "The Outlaw," a poem written by Whittier while a student at Haverhill Academy, with the editorial comment, " We consider it a prodigy of precocious talent." About this time Mr. Whittier went to Boston to edit the " Manufacturer," " a newspaper in the tariff interest," and Prentice, in a complimentary notice of the paper, expressed his high appreciation of the ability of its editor.
To which follows a little poem by Whittier, from the last number of the " Manufacturer," -" To a Star." It is too good to be lost, though its author has not cared to gather it into the "complete collection " of his poems. Nor do we find in that collection "Silent Worship" or " The Worship of Nature," copied by Prentice in August and Septem- ber from the " Essex Gazette." The first (acknowledged) contribution from " our favorite Whittier " was published Sept. 24, 1829, in the lines to S. E. M. Mr. Whittier's name appeared as editor July 19, 1830. In his leader, under the title " Egotism Extra," he declares his princi- ples as follows : " A disciple of Penn," therefore no duellist; " a cold- water man," and "disposed to eschew Jacksonism as he would a pestilence." During the two years of Mr. Whittier's editorship he con- tributed a poem or prose essay to almost every number of the "Review." In the autumn of 1830 his " New England Legends in Prose and Verse" were published at Hartford by Hanmer & Phelps ; and in 1832 he edited the "Literary Remains " of J. G. C. Brainard, prefixing a sketch of his life to the volume, which was published by P. B. Goodsell, the publisher of the " Connecticut Mirror." The following is an extract from a brief letter of Mr. Whittier written in answer to a request to describe his life in Hartford : -
AMESBURY, Mass., 1st mo., 13, 1885.
" MY DEAR FRIEND, -.. . My Hartford experience lies far back, buried under between fifty and sixty years, and I do not see the need of anything from me. I boarded first at the old Lunt Tavern and afterward at Jonathan Law's, formerly postmaster of Hartford. I knew well some of the best people in the little city. Judge Russ, Hon. Mr. Trumbull, Hon. Martin Welles, Dr. Todd, Mrs. Sigourney. Crary - afterward General Crary, Member of Congress from Michigan - and Charles Emerson, then young lawyers there, wrote for my paper, as did also F. A. P. Barnard, now President of Columbia College, New York. Crary and I went to New York to finish Prentice's Life of Henry Clay, which lacked two or three chapters. We boarded for two weeks at the tumble-down old Tontine Hotel in Wall Street.
I was chosen a delegate by the Connecticut National Republicans to the Convention which nominated Henry Clay for the Presidency, but was not able
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to go. I took some pleasant trips into the country to Talcott Mountains, New Haven, Litchfield, and other places, and on the whole had a pleasant time. There is really nothing worth telling of. I was there nearly two years. You will find my marks in the file of the old "Review," if there is one in existence. . . . JOHN G. WHITTIER.
In 1832 Judge Franklin G. Comstock purchased a half interest in the " Review " for his son, William G. Comstock, and Hanmer & Comstock became the publishers. It was an active anti-Jackson paper, one of the leading " Republican " journals of the State. In 1833 its publishers began the "Daily Review," afterward called the "Daily Morning Review." This was the first daily in Hartford. The "Courant " did not attempt one until 1837, nor the "Times " until 1841. The " Daily Review " consisted principally of political articles, deaths, marriages, and advertisements. Mr. Comstock bought out Samuel Hanmer, Jr., in 1834. In 1836 the paper was sold to a number of local political leaders, and Charles M. Emerson, to whom Mr. Whittier refers in his letter, was made editor. Subsequently it was sold to a Mr. Green, who sold it to Mr. Busteed, and it died in 1844 while owned by the Busteed family.
There was another " New England. Review " a few years later. In 1844 the " Columbian " was established by Wells & Willard. In 1845 they sold it to Nathan C. Geer, and in 1846 he sold it to Walter S. Williams, who named it the " New England Review," and had as editor Lucius F. Robinson, a graduate of Yale in 1843, and one of the most promising young lawyers of his day. In 1848 J. Gaylord Wells bought the paper and made it the " Connecticut Whig," a daily, with Mr. Rob- inson still as editor. It was merged in the " Courant" in 1849, after the presidential campaign had ended. The "Courant," it may be men- tioned here, had in 1845 absorbed the " Daily " and " Weekly Journal," established in 1843 by Elihu Geer as a Henry Clay protection advocate. Mr. Robinson, between 1857 and 1863, was the editor of Sprague's " American Literary Magazine," which was prepared here though pub- lished in New York.
Among other distinctively literary publications of Hartford, aside from the " Review " and the early newspapers, which were little but magazines, there have been the "Parterre," 1829; the " Pearl," estab- lished by Isaac Pray, Jr., in 1830, and removed to Boston 1835; the " Bouquet," established by Melzar Gardner in 1831, and merged in the " Pearl" in 1833 ; the " Museum," in 1836; and in 1847 the " Nonpa- reil," edited by William H. Burleigh, who published the " Charter Oak," as already mentioned.
Mr. Frank L. Burr has by request furnished the following sketch of the " Hartford Times."
The " Hartford Times " was started at the beginning of the year 1817. Its publisher was Frederick .D. Bolles, a practical printer, and at that time a young man full of confidence and enthusiasm in his journal and his cause. That cause was, in the party terms of the day, " Toleration." First, and paramount, of the objects of the Toleration- ists was to secure the adoption of a new Constitution for Connecticut. Under the ancient and loose organic law then in force, people of all forms and shades of religious belief were obliged to pay tribute to the Established Church. Such a state of things permitted no personal
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liberty, no individual election in the vital matter of a man's religion; and it naturally created a revolt. The cry of "Toleration !" arose. The Federalists met the argument with ridicule. The "Democratic Republicans " of the Jeffersonian fold, were the chief users of the Toler- ation cry, and the " Hartford Times " was established on that issue, and in support of the movement for a new and more tolerant Constitution. It proved to be a lively year in party politics. The Toleration issue became the engrossing theme. The " Times " was under the editorial care of John M. Niles,1 then a young and but little known lawyer from Poquonnock, who subsequently rose to a national reputation in the Senate at Washington. It dealt the Federalists some powerful blows, and en- listed in the cause a number of men of ability, who, but for the peculiar issue presented - one of religious freedom - never would have entered into party politics. Among them were prominent men of other denomi- nations than the orthodox Congregationalists. No wonder ; they were in one sense struggling for life. There was a good deal of public speak- ing; circulars and pamphlets were handed from neighbor to neighbor ; the " campaign " was in short a sharp and bitter one, and the main
issue was hotly contested. The excitement was intense. When it
began to appear that the Toleration cause was stronger than the Fed- eralists had supposed, there arose a fresh feeling of horrified apprehen- sion much akin to that which, seventeen years before, had led hundreds of good people in Connecticut, when they heard of the election of " the Infidel Jefferson " to the Presidency, to hide their Bibles, -many of them in the hay-mow, - under the conviction that that evident instru- ment of the Evil One would seek out and destroy every obtainable copy of the Bible in the land. The election came on in the spring of 1818, and the Federal party in Connecticut found itself actually overthrown. It was a thing unheard of - not to be believed by good Christians ; Lyman Beecher, in his Litchfield pulpit and family prayers, as one out of numerous cases, poured out the bitterness of his heart in declarations that everything was lost, and the days of darkness had come.
In fact it proved to be the day of "the new Constitution," - the existing law of 1818; and under its more tolerant influences other churches rapidly arose. The Episcopalians and the Baptists and the Methodists, all feeling their indebtedness to the party of Toleration, thenceforth voted generally with the Democratic party, - a state of things which continued till about the time of the new departure in national politics when the Fremont party was formed ; and that, with the historic events thereafter following, took off most of the Baptists and Methodists to vote with the new and enthusiastic Republican party, with its Antislavery banner.
The " Times," successful in the main object of its beginning, after witnessing this peaceful political revolution continued, and with several changes of proprietors. It was about sixty years ago that the paper became the property of Bowles & Francis as its publishing firm, - the Bowles being Samuel Bowles, the founder, many years later, of the " Springfield Republican," whose son, the late Samuel Bowles, built up that well-known journal to a high degree of prosperity. Subsequently the " Times " passed into the hands of a firm consisting of Mr. Benjamin H. Norton (who was in later years consul to Halifax) and Mr. John
1 Vol. ii. page 529.
John l Miles
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Russell (the father of Dr. Gurdon W. Russell, of Hartford), who con- tinued as its publisher till 1836. It was during these years, from 1828, when General Jackson was first elected President, and 1832 when he was re-elected, and the years following, down to Van Buren's election in 1836, that Gideon Welles lent to its editorial columns the aid of his vigorous and powerful pen.
In 1837 the publishers of the "Times" were Jones & Watts, the latter a pressman, and the former a graduate of Washington (now Trinity) College, who ran the paper for a year or more, and pretty nearly ran it into the ground. Henry A. Mitchell, who took the estab- lishment in the summer of 1838, found its condition such as required the publisher to be (what he was not) a practical printer and also a man of determined " reform" principles, to restore order out of chaos.
Jan. 1, 1839, was the beginning of a change in the " Times," which came gradually to be seen, and has ever since been more and more pronounced. It was the turning-point in the history of the paper. At that date Alfred E. Burr, then a printer in the " Hartford Courant" office (of which he had been for some years the foreman), after refus- ing a very liberal, advantageous, and urgent offer of the chance to become the proprietor of the "Courant," practically almost on his own terms, became a joint-proprietor of the " Times" with Judge Mitchell. Mr. Burr had entered the "Courant" office as a printer's boy, and there learned his trade as a printer. Mr. George Goodwin the elder, at the time of Mr. Burr's departure from that office, - where he had " made up" and put to press the first number of the "Daily Courant" in 1837, - was quite an old man ; and, feeling that the "Courant " must pass into other hands, he and his sons were very desirous that Mr. Burr should be its publisher and owner. But while the offered terms were in other respects extremely favorable, two conditions were imposed which defeated the wish of the Messrs. Goodwin. One was that the young man should join the Whig party, and the other that he should attend an Orthodox church. It was an offer well calculated to test the moral fibre of the man. Ile had entered the "Courant" office at the age of twelve years, and had worked hard and faithfully for twelve of life's best years to save, if possible, a few hard-earned dollars, - working often all night as well as all day; and at twenty-one he was the possessor of hardly twenty dollars thus laboriously gained. The offer of such an opportunity to enter upon a smooth and easy road to assured prosperity, after long years of hard and unremunerative toil, was such a chance as few young men meet with. To reject it all for conscience' sake was an act still more rare than the offer itself. This was done, greatly to the sorrow of Mr. Goodwin. The "Courant" passed into other hands, and Mr. Burr, in January, 1839, became a part-owner of the " Times." He found the establishment practically a wreck, - the mechanical department ill-furnished and in confusion, the accounts also in confusion, and the property of but little value as it stood. He went to work to remedy this, by hard and constant applica- tion, acting for a while as printer, foreman, itemizer, and even book- keeper ; for the establishment - a weekly and semi-weekly paper then - could not for a time even afford to employ a clerk.
It took many years of this close and hard labor to bring things into proper shape. On Jan. 1, 1841, Mr. Burr bought out Judge Mitchell's
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share in the proprietorship, giving his notes for the amount. March 2, 1841, he began the publication of the "Daily Times." It began with a subscription list of only three hundred. The office was on the second floor of the old Central Row corner, and the printing department was the corner room, and the editorial and business part in the room adjoining. The press, worked by a pow- erful negro at the wheel and two men handling the flies, could barely print five or six hundred papers an hour on one side. All folding in those days was done by hand. In 1846 a new and larger press, built to order, was introduced ; but this also proved too slow, and in 1848 the "Times" was the first Con- neeticut newspaper that was printed on a cylinder press, - a Taylor single eylin- der, air-cushion machine, built, like its predecessor, to order. On that press the "Times" was printed for twenty years, -improved machinery being in- troduced only after the fire, which, in March, 1869, destroyed the printing THE HON. ALFRED E. BURR. establishment. In 1854 Mr. F. L. Burr's name was added to the publishing firm, which then became Burr Brothers. This has ever since been the name and style of the firm, - a later addition having been made in 1879, when Mr. W. O. Burr, son of the senior publisher, became a member.
The history of the " Hartford Times " would be almost a life history of its publishers, and a history of the Democratic party of Connecticut. The senior proprietor, born March 27, 1815, is probably the oldest active journalist in New England, if not in the country. He has made the " Times " what it is. It began in 1841 the sensible departure from the custom of the party press in those days of depending upon " Govern- ment patronage," and relied instead upon its own merits as a news- paper for support. Another change, 1846, was so evidently proper and really necessary, after it had been once fairly made, as to cause wonder why it had not been made sooner, -namely, the abolition of the old and vicious credit system in dealing with subscribers everywhere, and the establishment, instead, of a system of advance payment. Gradually the others, who were shocked at the stand taken by the "Times," and incredulous as to its success, one by one followed its example.
In its political course the " Times " has always had the confidence of the party with which it has been identified, and which it has materi- ally helped to success in many a hard-fought contest. Yet it has not hesitated on more than one occasion to differ squarely with its party when it felt that the party was wrong; as in the historic matter of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854 when the Democrats, after their overwhelming triumph of '52, lost sight of their own party tradi- tions, and illustrated the folly of those who "feel power and forget right." The "Times," breaking with Senator Toneey on this question, - and indeed with the National Administration and most of the Demo-
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cratic party,-plainly warned that party of the effects of the proposed repeal. It predicted a terrible civil war and disunion as likely to fol- low ; but the Democrats -at that day the blind followers of blind guides - persisted in repealing the Compromise. What followed has become the most momentous part of our country's history. These results were clearly foreseen by the senior editor of the "Times." His prescience in watching the drift of national events was as marked as his sagacity in business and local political affairs. By his untiring labors he had more than once placed his party in Connecticut in the position of advantage, while others had the credit of it. He cared nothing for that, but worked always for principle, and for what he believed to be the cause of Justice and Right. In the history of the Connecticut Democracy he has been throughout the Warwick, -the maker of kings, while steadily and adroitly refusing, himself, all posts of honor. To his discernment and sagacious energy, and his rare tact, most emphatically, are due, more than to any other man or score of men, the successes of the Connecticut Democrats, though he always sought to put that credit on somebody else. His saving work for his party, like his practical benefactions to the needy, would never be as- certained from him - nor from anybody else if he could prevent it.
It was in the years 1854 and 1855 that the Hon. Gideon Welles, who had been for most of the time since 1827 an editorial writer on the " Times," joined the then just organizing "new party," which in the last-named year took the name and shape of the great Republican party. Mr. Welles began his work for the Republicans in the columns of the " Evening Press," a Republican journal, which had been begun in 1856. In building up the Connecticut Republicans no one voice was so powerful through the press as that of Gideon Welles. President Lincoln called Mr. Welles to his Cabinet. It is but justice to truth, and to one of the most remarkable men who in those days of noted leaders were in any way connected with the Government at Wash- ington, to say that Mr. Lincoln trusted to no member of his Cabinet for advice and counsel more fully than he did to Mr. Welles; and it is also true that no one was worthier of that trust.
It was well for our country that Mr. Lincoln had such a man in his Cabinet. More than the country yet knows, it was the saving firmness and wisdom of Gideon Welles that at critical junctures served unseen to turn the tide of fortune in favor of the Government. He was not given, like so many others, to blowing his own horn; but he prompted one or two of the most important measures of the war, and his counsel at all times was so good that the sorely-tried President learned to value and rely upon it. He kept a diary of the experiences of those stormy years through the first two Republican administrations - for he was in Johnson's as well as Lincoln's Cabinet -and this important manu- script, it is to be hoped, may yet, in part at least, be given to the public. Portions of it would surprise the public in more directions than one.
Mr. Welles returned to Hartford after the end of Mr. Johnson's administration, and resumed his old-time cordial relations with the "Times " and its publishers. He was daily in the office, as of old, reading the newspapers and making characteristic comments on men and events and the various political occurrences of the day. His pres- ence was always a welcome one in the "Times" office. There, more
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especially in the twenty years "before the war," he never failed to make one of the friendly company of prominent politicians and others whose stories, anecdotes, wit, and uproarious mirth made the old "Times " office a favorite resort, in those years, for people who gathered there just to enjoy the fun. Pleasantly and lovingly remembered as impor- tant individuals in that lively group were William James Hamersley, Thomas H. Seymour, Charles Chapman, and many more. It was not the most favorable condition for the preparation of the editorial and other matter for a daily paper, in the midst of such lively but distract- ing surroundings ; but the editorial work was done, for many years, in the midst of just that state of things. The paper is now conducted on better business principles, though it lacks the old-time social features in its business office. The "Times" has now grown to the position of the leading Connecticut journal in circulation, and rests on a basis of assured prosperity.
The Democratic or Jefferson and Jackson school of politics had various exponents besides the " Hartford Times." The " Mercury," as has been explained, ran into the "Independent Press" in 1833, edited for two years by Mr. Hamersley. Thomas H. Seymour, who was after- ward Governor of Connecticut and United States Minister to Russia, was the editor of the weekly " Jeffersonian," published for two years by Henry Bolles. In 1835 John B. Eldridge, who had cdited the " Connecticut Centinel " in New London and the "Springfield Whig" in Springfield, Mass., established the "Patriot and Democrat." In 1840 he was appointed marshal of Connecticut, and the paper was merged in the "State Eagle," conducted by James Holbrook, which was discontinued in 1842. Mr. Eldridge died in Hartford in 1882. He had acquired a large property, and for years was the president of the Connecticut Fire Insurance Company.
The " Connecticut Common School Manual," a monthly, one of the earliest educational journals of the country, was started in Hartford in 1838 by Dr. Henry Barnard, then commissioner of common schools in the State. This was continued for four years and then resumed in 1851, when Dr. Barnard returned to Connecticut. In 1855 it was turned over to the State Teachers' Association, and Dr. Barnard began the " American Journal of Education," a quarterly, which is now in its thirty-first year. This has been the medium of bringing out a series of educational tracts and treatises, which constitute a library of education of fifty-two volumes of 500 pages cach, containing over 800 titles, making it the largest issue of such a character in print.
The " Hartford Telegram," a morning Democratic paper, was estab- lished in 1883 by D. C. Birdsall and William Parsons. It was re- organized in 1885, and is now owned by D. C. Birdsall and Colonel E. M. Graves ; the latter acting as editor.
There are two Sunday papers : the "Journal," established in 1867 and made the " Sunday Journal " in 1874, by Captain Joseph H. Bar- num, who has been its editor and publisher since 1869; and the "Sunday Globe," established in 1876 by C. W. Griswold, now edited and published by Allen Willey.
It is not in place to present the whole array of newspapers at present
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flourishing in the city, which includes the " Weekly Underwriter," one of the leading insurance journals of the country, published by H. S. Hayden ; the "Poultry World," by H. H. Stoddard ; the " Connecticut Farmer ; " the " Hartford Herold ; " and many others devoted to special objects. Elihu Geer's "City Directory," established in 1837, is regarded as the model directory of the country.
Not less than sixteen distinctively religious journals have been established, and have had a sufficient existence in Hartford to leave a recollection. Several of them still exist and hold place among the leading papers of this class in the country. The "Congregationalist," now of Boston, the leading paper of that sect, was begun in Hartford in 1839 by Elihu Geer, and after running for several years was removed to Boston. It was an outgrowth of the "Northern Watchman," an older journal, which was merged in it when the "Congregationalist" was established. The " Churchman," of New York, the leading Episco- pal paper, was established in Hartford in 1865 by the Messrs. Mallory. It dates back, however, to the "Calendar," which was established in 1845 and continued until 1865, and that was preceded by the " Epis- copal Watchman," founded in 1828; and that by the "Churchman's Magazine," founded in 1821. Indeed, the Episcopal press comes next in point of numbers to the Congregational in Hartford.
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